I have realized that since I discovered how many Japanese people love 80's action movies, or how stuff like Top Gun: Maverick preformed better than the Hollywood analyst had predicted it would overseas.

It turns out, other people like America when it actually acts like America.

Wow, who could have seen that coming? Except for all the people who did but where told by some of the others that they were just degenerates.

Speaking as someone from the area:

1. Downtown KC (which is on the MO side) is actually pretty clean and safe as far as big cities go. But the second you get away from downtown or the other tourist areas (Power and Light District, Country Club Plaza, the stadiums, the zoo, and Worlds/Oceans of Fun), it can get pretty hairy. And do not go to Independence or Raytown if you can help it, as that is where the bulk of the worst things are. Although looking at where this store is in relation to the local area, it is actually not a terrible part of town, so it is entirely possible people are deliberately targeting that store in particular.

2. KCK is where all of the rich people live and where all of the major corporate HQ's are. In a fashion that will sound all too typical, even though they are typically left-leaning (Johnson County, KS is the second most left wing behind Douglas County, where Lawrence is) they are extremely aggressive with law enforcement, cleanliness ordnances, and the other usual's. Meanwhile, the other half of KCK in Wyandotte County is actually more working class/middle class and so gets the same aggressive enforcement but because they actually believe in it instead of NIMBY-ism from AWFL's.

"You are causing safety concerns."

"How?"

"Our psychopathic supporters may turn up and try to murder everyone, and we dont really feel like stopping them."

This has been a trend across several countries now. Trump overperformed with young voters, and the only demographic he is wildly underwater with is Boomers. Boomers are the ones who elected the current PM in Canada, while younger voters went with other parties. All across Europe, the nationalistic parties like AfD are being overwhelmingly supported by younger voters while older voters keep voting for the old established parties.

There is clearly something to it worldwide, and it is why I think people dooming are internal saboteurs rather than actually important drivers of movements.

Mata left because she broke her contract with VShojo and was let go as a result. So it was probably unrelated to this. Now Geega on the other hand did leave on her own recently and now that Mouse has confirmed what went down Geega has confirmed she knew this happened and left because of it.

Although, apparently Mata seeking merch providers other than VShojo was brought on by them being months behind on actually getting people their merch they had paid for and refusing to talk to her or the fans still waiting about what was happening. So me thinks that not all was well behind the scenes if they are cheaping out on merch and stealing charity money.

While that is a fair contention, there are absolutely people who do it just because they want to squeeze profit, not because they are scraping to make ends meet. Like I remember back during his first term, they tried to run with a story of some asparagus farmer in Idaho who had some of his crop rot in the field because he didnt have any "migrant workers" to do it, and he couldnt find any locals willing to do the job. That got reported all across the news.

What got less reported was farmers from his same area saying "Hey, we already mechanized our harvest years ago while he didnt because he didnt want to pay for machines. And the reason no one took his job openings is because he was paying less than you would make working at the local McDonalds." And we saw a similar thing with the owner of some metal fab in Ohio during the 2024 election who was hiring Haitians instead of Americans for the same reasons, only for it to turn out that he was getting kickbacks for hiring the Haitians and once again was being a cheapskate.

So there are absolutely small timers who are doing it just because they are greedy, but I do agree it is mostly the major corporate farms (I distinguish "major corporate" because at least here in KS, most farms are corporate, but they are "Billy Bob and Sons, LLC" because it gives better tax advantages and makes it easier to have side businesses).

It may just be my personal opinion, but I also think Rubio has been shockingly effective as the SecState. He has done a pretty good job of helping to actually make the dismantling of USAID effective and as permeant as possible, and a lot of the foreign policy success has been on his back (especially in Latin America). But he has also been just doing what he should be doing instead of going out and grandstanding as well.

Not only that, it has been confirmed by a lot of people both inside and outside the Admin that stuff like this and stunts like the Binder fiasco from a few months ago were all her idea. I think there is also something to be said that ever since they got access a lot of the others had been backing off and seemingly starting to temper expectations, while Bondi was the one going on the news and making it all a big spectacle that she was in charge of.

In many cases, the machine already exist. The owners of these farms are usually just too cheap to actually spend money on a machine even though doing so would make them more money in the long run.

Meanwhile, in the states where they are a lot more hostile to illegal farm workers (like Florida), their farming is already mostly mechanized. I am sure it is a coincidence.

IS A GOOD FANTASTIC FOUR MOVIE TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR?!

Apparently the best we are ever going to get in that regard is The Incredibles. Because Hollywood seems to get absolutely brain-broken whenever you try to make anything related to them.

Yet again, I thank my ancestors for shooting their way out of having to care about what the Pope thinks.

It would probably also explain why there are so many American climbers. We have a ton of mountain ranges (including but not limited to: Cascades, Rockies, Appalachians, Alaska Range), that all have different peaks, difficulties, climates, etc. So it is possible to train yourself on climbing something like Pikes Peak, Rainer, or McKinley before you prepare for "The Big One" as it were. McKinley especially since it is the second highest behind Everest IIRC (and certainly in the top 5 if it isnt).

That was also back when Vance was pretty on the fence about Trump and saw him as a corrupt billionaire who hated Americans and would screw them over. Many of his proposed economic solutions to the problem were tolerable to the Left/Hollywood, so they could hold their nose and stomach anything else he believed.

Much like Trump, it was only after he got elected to represent Ohio and showed that he was now a political threat that they turned against him.

Ah, I was just unclear then. I was not saying Trump offered help, it was that Johnny went begging to the Embassy.

It was reported on by Legal Mindset, who at least has the contacts to know since he does a lot of traveling and works as a visa lawyer in Thailand and S. Korea. It was that he tried to go to the US Embassy and they are the ones who told him that his crimes were not of a political persecution, so he would have to face his fate.

At least for me, I am willing to buy it, since it isnt like he is the first, last, or only American who has faced legal repercussions overseas for crimes they committed. See also: Vitaly, currently slumming it up in a Filipino jail, with no sign of potential relief from the US.

I heard a rumor that the Vtubers had to use their actual heights for their toons.

It depends. A lot of individuals who are Indie go wild and will make a model however they want, especially if they have no intention of a 3D model (where accurate measures matter). But when you have things like Hololive, it has been more or less confirmed that their models are proportional to their height and body because it makes it easier to make a 3D rig and then have them interact in a group together without clipping or other model weirdness.

I dont know if I would even call most of the Indies like that "Right-leaning". Some are, like Leaflit and Kirsche, but most of the other ones that the Twitter Freaks have tried to cancel are just...normal. But they are free to say what is actual, normal beliefs and opinions because, like Shoeonhead pointed out in one of her recent videos, their anonymity lets them protect themselves from the "eternal HR longhouse" that will henpeck them for the "crimes" of saying men deserve love, because you cant intimidate and bully them. But the Left has so thoroughly lost the plot that nowadays normal looks like the Right-Wing to them.

Yet again they side with the Progs and then blame others for doing it.

He has apparently already tried. And the response of the State Department effectively amounted to "Literally who are you?" If you actually commit a crime in another country, it has long been the position of the US government that its your own damn fault and you are going to have to live with it. And considering that no one (not even other black people) like him, there would be no reason to help.

EDIT: To make it more clear to avoid further confusion, the "He tried" was related to Johnny attempting to get the US to bail him out.

I still think Holo is going to be fine, as they have largely bounced back from their controversies at the beginning of the year. But I do agree that a lot of corpo's are falling off and Indies are on the rise. Much like with gaming, the lows of Indies can be Mean Girl back biting, jealousy, and trash-tier models, but the heights can be so much better. I mean, just compare how expressive Saba's model is with Gura's and even if she didnt hate Hololive you can already tell how much better off she is.

I mean, she has also been pretty open in the past that it isnt even type casting, she does like the look.

If you believe the stuff that has been found about her IRL looks, it is probably because she is in fact a petite woman IRL so why wouldnt she be one fictionally.

Killing the ayatollah would simply cause the state to collapse, and a civil war to break out.

To that end, I thought Victor Davis Hansen had an interesting read of exactly how "regime change" would shake out in Iran with the current state of things we know on the ground.

The TLDR being that the people of Iran will absolutely be embarrassed and angry over the impotence of their leadership after what has happened, but lacks the organization to be able to do anything about it themselves. With what he saw as more likely being that the Military (which has now seen all of its own regime-friendly officers killed and replaced by younger "wild card" officers) will take the opportunity to blame the Ayatollahs for this mess, execute them, and implement an Egyptian-style Military Dictatorship. Which he also views as only marginally better than the current situation in terms of regional stability.

I'm just gonna say it: People here need to go touch some fucking grass. They have well and truly lost the plot and have become everything they claim they are fighting against. Go watch some anime, go play your favorite game, read a book, I dont really care. It was fun at first just winding people up and choosing violence but even that is getting boring now after a few days. And I really do think it will hurt the long term viability of this board if it just becomes a bunch of people incapable of having fun screaming "DER JUDEN!!!" to each other in increasingly louder pitches.

A nation that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans, the mass funding of terrorism, and the destabilization of an entire region has been shown to be a paper tiger and brought to its knees after the "It totally didnt set us back, trust us bro" destruction of their nuclear facilities by a wrathful god that they literally didnt even see coming is now forced to a ceasefire and will be forced to give up its ambitions.

And that is before we get around to the fact that Israel more or less neutered their entire military and ballistic missile capability after being the ones to prove said paper tiger status by owning their skies to the point they could do daylight raids.